Can't tell if fish is sick

[Codefox]

I have 10 red eye tetras in my 55 gal and I can't tell if something is wrong with one of them. The lower jaw on one seems a bit whitish and larger than the others but it's really hard to tell for sure. Any thoughts? The fish is acting normally right now.

[Wizzard~Of~Ozz]

Keep a watch on it for columnaris (Mouth Fungus), or it could have injured itself, so try some salt if your tankmates will tolerate it (no scaleless fish), also what are your tank readings? (Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate). I would keep a very close eye on it, if you want, you can add some melafix, it will help in either case. Don't start putting any heavy meds in until you try the basics, (water change, melafix, salt and patience).

[Japola44]

I would separate him in a QT tank if you are going to use melafix. its an antibiotic and will kill the good bacteria along with the bad, and if u use too much can decycle your tank

[Wizzard~Of~Ozz]

Melafix is herbal (not a true antibiotic) and won't harm fish, filters or inverts. That is unless they started adding something aside from teatree oil.

If it does develop into an infection, then yes a QT would be advisable along with actual antibiotics.

[Codefox]

If it gets to that point I'll use a QT tank to treat him, especially since I'm just beginning my cycle. Seems I had an NH3 spike (though I'm not really sure I trust my Tetra kit's results. I have a Seachem ammonia detector in the tank just to let me know if there's a problem and it still says 0 ammonia) since my Tetra test came back at 3.0 ppm. I did a 50% water change and the reading went down to about 1.5 ppm so after dinner I'll do another 50% water change to try and get that ammonia under control.

[Codefox]

I'm now at around 1.5 ppm NH3 but I don't want to overstress the fish by doing too many water changes either so I think I'm going to wait until tommorrow to do another one. I'll just do 25% - 33% changes for now unless it's spiked back up to 3.0 ppm by tommorrow

[Codefox]

Hmm, the tap is testing at 1.5 ppm...that doesn't seam right...

[Wizzard~Of~Ozz]

I think someone was mentioing chloramine will show up on an ammonia test, what dechloranator are you currently using?

[Codefox]

I'm using Kordon's NovAqua+

That could make sense if chloramine is showing up because I can't imagine tap water having 1.5 ppm ammonia...but still, if it's throwing off my tests, I dunno what to do

[Japola44]

try adding a little dechloranator to your tank. Put it in at the filter output so it gets despursed through the tank then wait a little bit and test your water again.

[Zagz]

Also you can't do too many water changes when your NH3 is up. It stressed the fish considerably more to be poisioned by NH3 than water changes. I would do 50% at a time. Also I recommend Prime as a declorinator. It seems like it is more expensive and the initial purchase is, but you use much much less than other declorinators, so the cost is rather minimal.

[Codefox]

That's why I'm holding off on any further changes...and I actually really like NovAqua since I've used it for years so I really don't want to change now. I'll see where it goes.

[Wizzard~Of~Ozz]

You should give prime a shot, it removes far more from the water then just chlorine, in the list are chlorine, chloramine and it will detoxify Heavy metals, Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate making it the perfect addative to help when a problem arises.

[Codefox]

I'll give the prime a shot but I think the water may be alright. The fish in question looks better since the water change and I suspect that it may have actually been a cut. I'll keep an eye on them but my extremely high ammonia reading just doesn't jive with the fact that the fish are very healthy looking.